CIMERWA, Rwanda’s sole producer of cement, on Friday introduced ‘Bulk Cement’ offering, an innovative service that will see customers receive cement directly at their construction sites without the use of bagged cement.The Bulk Cement offering, which includes the introduction of ‘bulkers’ as the most suited solution to the inconvenience of transporting bags of cement to construction sites, was unveiled at a breakfast meeting held in Kigali.

According to officials, previously, they used to supply cement in bags, which was a little bit costly and time consuming, but it will now be easier for clients with the introduction of CIMERWA Bulk Cement."The bulk tank will unlock some of the bottlenecks encountered with bagged cement. There have been a lot of challenges, especially at construction sites of big complexes when it comes to manually loading and offloading them,” said Bheki Mthembu, the company’s CEO. He said that, this time around, a bulk truck will deliver cement directly to the construction site, pump it in the silo after which construction sites can instantaneously batch it.The new service targets large construction projects such as stadiums, civil works construction, and large buildings."This service is set to make our clients’ work easier in terms of packaging, loading and unloading, bring about faster delivery of cement and onsite inventory for cement,” he noted.

Theobald Mugabo, the managing director of HYGEBAT Construction Company, one of the frequent customers of CIMERWA, said that the new bulk cement is cheaper than the bagged one.Mthembu said that there’s a need for more innovative services to match the pace of the country’s infrastructural development."There’s a real need to expedite and complete these projects and hence our introduction of cement bulkers as the most suited solution,” "We have a batching plant here, and so we prefer using bulk cement because it is cheap as opposed to other types of cement in bags. You do not need bags anymore if you are using bulk cement and you can even save more money,” he said.

The board chairman of CIMERWA, Jonathan Gatera, said the company is realising its production targets and continues to  create employment for Rwandans."CIMERWA has grown from strength to strength, and today we are extremely proud to be a private company that the country can rely on to achieve its development goals in trade and industry,” he said.

The firm’s production capacity is 600,000 tonnes per year. With its strategic partner PPC, a South African cement producing company which also holds the majority stake in CIMERWA, wants to devise more initiatives that will see it compete at the regional level.editorial@newtimes.co.rw